Airport Safety in Harmony with ICAO

Kirk Shaffer of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says safety is “everybody’s priority” and safety regulation takes place in a “complex environment.” Panelists speaking at the annual ACI-NA meeting in Boston all agree that much is being done to ensure that airport safety regulation across national jurisdictions is converging toward harmonization with ICAO in all areas, including planning and design, certification, enhancement of visual ground aids, and coping with the new, larger aircraft soon to go online. Shaffer congratulated U.S. airports on their success in implementing recurrent annual airfield driver training, enhanced taxiway centerline markings, installation of runway status lights and improvement in runway safety areas (RSAs) where practicable. Overarching these initiatives is the importance of a forward-looking Safety Management System (SMS). Bill Voss of the Flight Safety Foundation announced that a revised approach and landing accident reduction (ALAR) toolkit will be available in early 2009. Every element in the system will reap the benefits of FSF’s work with many of the important players in the industry to identify the high-risk areas in the safety arena and design-effective interventions. Voss expressed special hope that the revised ALAR toolkit will help improve recent poor performance in the area of runway excursions. Air travel has never been safer. But that doesn’t mean that the people responsible for air safety aren’t continuing to raise the bar.